A Sudden Chill
by Sultry Sweet
Summary: Before Storybrooke is frozen over, Emma suffers the worst of the chilly effects and she leaves her life in the hands of a still-angry Regina. Set in season 4. Solely Swan Queen.


**A/N: I originally posted this in parts on Tumblr because when I started writing it, I didn't know how long it was going to be. Well, 7 parts later and I had plenty of story here to make a oneshot. So that's what this is. Enjoy!**

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><p>The streets were frozen and anyone outside could see their breath no matter how faintly they exhaled. It wasn't the right time of the year for icy roads, but there it was. Clear and beautifully reflective but dangerous, especially considering the person responsible for covering Storybrooke with it.<p>

There was no control over herself and the ice she shot out of her hands and those that dared startle her received no warning before a stream of freezing magic sprinted toward them from a steady hand. Thankfully for everyone else, Emma Swan was the only one to experience such an unfortunate turn of events as she had followed the chill straight to Elsa.

She had been alone, driving, when she hit a patch of ice and started to spin wildly out of control in her Bug. It was her first night in Storybrooke all over again, except when she got out of the car to investigate she didn't realize it just might have been the last thing she did. She hadn't realized that by following wisps of ice when she felt the strangely familiar sense of magic in the air that she might have been too confident in her abilities to face new-comer fairy tale characters that could potentially be a threat to the townspeople.

Though she wasn't inexperienced when it came to challenging magical beings, she still relied on her gun and acted more like a sheriff than the magic-wielding daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming. And when she saw braided, platinum blonde hair and a light blue dress that quickly and oddly reminded her of one of Disney's latest movies, she almost slipped on the ice that made a path to the woman she only partially recognized.

As she briefly lost her footing, she gasped and emitted a few small sounds of protest as she tried to right herself. Before she could call her efforts a success, the other blonde whipped around and defensively threw a hand out in Emma's direction. The blonde in the blue dress appeared just as shocked as Emma before a burst of cold hit the sheriff and Savior directly in the chest.

Emma gave up trying to save herself from falling onto the ice and thudded ass first onto the frozen-over sidewalk. Her green eyes were blown wide with fear and concern before she momentarily adopted a scrunched up look of pain upon impact with the ice.

The gun Emma hadn't even bothered to raise above her waist when she was still upright clattered against the thickly protected ground next to her and she tried to take a few deep breaths as she placed a hand over her heart. She furrowed her brows as she looked down at herself before she lifted her gaze to the other woman. She finally got a good look at her and knew without a doubt that the blonde resembled Elsa from the movie she had seen with Henry not too long ago in New York. It was the last look she got, however, because when she tried to speak to the live action Elsa—when she tried to understand what had just occurred—the braided blonde shook her head and bolted.

Emma reached out with the hand that wasn't currently pressed to her chest in an attempt to call Elsa back, but she instantly curled into herself. Her breathing was too shallow and every movement seemed to cause a concentrated prick of pain that started in her heart and radiated in a slight ripple effect through the rest of her chest, down her arms, and fizzled out when it reached her fingertips. With sudden clarity, she understood her entire body felt like the title of the movie suggested.

Her movement was limited due to the pain she thought would have taken longer to feel so she tried her hardest to crawl back to her Bug. With chattering teeth and trembling lips that became less pink with every minute it took to get back the main road, she managed to fight through the chill and the almost unbearable pain that came with it. It took only minutes to reach the car, but it felt like months by the time her stiff body rested against the closed and previously damaged yellow door. Her hands shook as she dug around in the pocket of her tan-ish leather jacket and clumsily pulled out her cell phone.

Her eyes started to droop from the tiring effort of dragging herself back to the Volkswagen so she went to her recent calls list and dialed the first name on it. After several rings and no answers, she heard the rich and curt recording of one Regina Mills requesting the caller to leave a message she would get back to at the earliest convenience.

Due to recent events, Emma knew Regina's earliest convenience regarding her would be too late for the ice cold blonde if Regina even bothered to listen to her message at all. Instead of calling anyone else, though, Emma proceeded to leave a message and prayed to whatever gods did in fact exist that wasn't screwed by trusting her son's other mother.

"Regina..." Emma struggled to say as her voice wavered with the shivers that racked her body. "I know I'm the _last_ person you would want to talk to...or help out right now...but I really need you."

She took a long pause after that. Partly because of the cold she felt from the inside out and partly because of the four words she'd just admitted to Regina's voicemail, which meant she'd also admitted it to Regina if the brunette ever checked the message. She tried to regulate her all-too-slow breathing with little achievement and replaced her thoughts about what it meant to say "I need you" to Regina with thoughts of what she else was going to say in the hopes that maybe she stood a chance of surviving whatever Elsa had done to her.

"I don't know what's happening to me," Emma started to speak again, "but I'm cold and I think I just saw Elsa from that Disney movie. I'm...down the street from Granny's. Closer to the hardware store. I'm by my car so you can't miss me."

She paused again and desperation took over.

"..._Please_. Hate me all you want, but please come find me. Hell, you can yell at me...and hate me right to my face. Just do me this one favor...and I'll do anything you ask."

She ended the call and puffed out a very visible breath of air that appeared in front of her, thick and white like smoke or a heavy fog. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the car door. A few seconds passed before she squeezed her eyes shut tighter and her lips quivered for a different reason than the sudden shift in weather. When she opened her eyes not much later, they were watery and close to being filled with impending tears.

She faced problems head on and no longer ran from them, but emotions had finally gotten the best of her after two years of back and forth chaos in Storybrooke, even including having to accept false memories and leave everyone she'd just gotten to know—_family_ she'd just gotten to know—behind in the Enchanted Forest. She had cried only three times since arriving in the small, fairy tale riddled town, and each time was for good reason. It was when she'd already fought so hard to the point of physical and emotional exhaustion when she cried, with the exception of the time before she took Henry with her to New York with those false memories. That time she had cried because she didn't want to stop fighting, didn't want to accept that she would have to part from her parents. On top of that, she had Regina standing in front of her, offering her the happy ending she had wanted for years but thought she would never have or deserve.

Now, she cried because she was cold and alone and she had Henry to think about. He had recently enough lost his father, who he had barely gotten to know and that sucked because apparently Neal would have gone out of his way to be a good dad as he swore he wouldn't turn into his own. If Henry lost her, too...

She didn't want to think about the ways she could potentially break his bright and beautiful heart. All he wanted was for his family to be together, just like Emma had always craved to have a family at all. By dying, if that's what she was doing as she sat against the Bug with hardly any warmth to her body, she would only further tear apart Henry's family.

It had started when they were all reunited in Storybrooke, Neal included, and she refused to let Henry have his real memories back. When she wanted nothing more than to stop Zelena for the safety of her parents and the town and then leave with Henry, back to New York and the life she thought she was worth living more than the freak show Storybrooke presented them. Because she held off finding another way to restore Henry's memories, Neal died before Henry could even see him since they had crossed the town line a year prior.

And as if that hadn't been heartbreaking enough, Emma had to go and bring Marian back from the past on her little stop to the Enchanted Forest with Hook. Marian no longer being dead threw a huge wrench into Regina's newfound happiness because Marian was Robin's wife and Roland's mother.

Regina had tried to destroy many people's lives and tried to break up a family or two in the past, but she had changed. She had changed and she seemed to have walked away from Robin the second she realized who the woman was that Emma had brought back with her. It probably had something to do with the fact that Regina had been the one to kill Marian—or at least sent her to her execution. But Emma could also tell it was so much more than worrying about how Robin and Roland would see her once they knew the truth.

All of that meant Regina didn't want anything to do with her, which meant Henry would be stuck between his two mothers. Unlike when he first brought her to Storybrooke, Henry now wanted _both_ of his mothers and favored neither one over the other. So for Regina to want nothing to do with Emma or her parents, it put Henry in a difficult position.

And now? Now Emma was most likely never going to see any of them ever again. She'd die in the street, against her beloved Bug, with self-deprecating thoughts to haunt her until her last moment of consciousness. She had already had struggles with calling herself the Savior and as she loathed how stupidly she'd sped up her death, she started to struggle with it all over again. What kind of savior foolishly wandered off without help or a proper defense before dealing with an unknown threat? Not to mention the fact that as she sat almost completely still, next to no ability to move any further than her current spot on the road, she couldn't come up with a single solution to save herself. That thought alone sparked the question in her mind as to how she'd managed to make it this far in life if all she had in her to be her own hero was to call Regina, to rely on someone who most likely didn't give a damn enough about her right now to even listen to her message before deleting it.

For that, she was more than just an orphan; she was pathetic too.

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><p>She had lost track of time as soon as she had the lost the feeling in her fingers, which prevented her from checking her phone for the exact time or calling or texting anyone else after her failed attempt to reach Regina. Emma had no trouble admitting every mistake she had made in the last forty-eight hours and though there weren't many, they were <em>monumental<em> mistakes.

In all the time she spent against the Bug, she had never wished for anything more than for a single person to just walk past and notice her freezing to death. Of course, everyone was either working, in their homes, or enjoying a warm meal they didn't have to prepare at Granny's diner. All of them were completely oblivious to the threat of Elsa, which seemed like the wrong thing to say about the Disney character considering how she was only misunderstood in the movie and not actually evil.

But she hadn't been able to say anything to the other blonde before she was struck and Elsa had fled. So Emma didn't know for sure if Elsa was anything like her fictional counterpart, and it wouldn't be unheard of for a fairy tale to be the exact opposite of how they were portrayed in a movie because it happened almost every time Emma turned around in Storybrooke.

Emma found it fortunate that her brain hadn't stopped functioning altogether with how cold she was, but she really didn't want to think about anything involving her recent faults or the woman who left her to die on a day that hadn't exactly started well in the first place. From burning her toast to replaying the gut-wrenching, though short, conversation with Regina outside of the diner right after she met Marian for the first time since she'd had her locked up for aiding Snow White so long ago.

That conversation was the sole reason why Emma was convinced before she even finished leaving her message that Regina wouldn't come to her rescue. The brunette had all but sworn her off like their budding friendship was something to quickly forget because it was such a bad idea they should have never fooled themselves into forming. It had crushed Emma, but she still held out hope that eventually Regina would come around. But now Emma didn't have until eventually. She had until the rest of her body shut down on her.

It was the slowest way to die.

She didn't want to die.

So why didn't try to do something about it?

She had told Regina she was with her car, the big yellow heap of metal, and if she moved she was afraid the woman wouldn't find her and she'd die anyway. That's why she hadn't gotten into her car before her dumb hands relented to the chill that had slowly seeped further throughout her body the instant she was hit with the icy blast. But now that her hands _had _given up the fight and was sure that was long enough to wait for Regina, she thought she should probably attempt to stand and go warn the others of Elsa's arrival, which was almost definitely what Regina said she hoped Emma hadn't done: brought something else back with her aside from Marian.

Well, she was certainly paying the price for that kind of magic now, wasn't she? Regina could have at least rubbed it in her face that she had warned her, if she would have just shown up. Maybe Emma should have mentioned that in the message. Or sent a text that said, "You were right" and waited with a little more confidence that she would live to see tomorrow.

A puff of smoke and suddenly she wasn't alone anymore.

"You _idiot_," Emma heard from her left side, closer to the back end of the Bug, before her company stepped in front of her.

She looked up with an uncontrollably wobbling jaw and puppy-dog eyes, doe-like in size as though begging to be loved. She had never been so happy or thankful to hear those words. It meant she was saved, or maybe it meant she would die another way. If that was the case, Emma seriously hoped that mercy would be given and she would die at least a week from now. And maybe not as slowly either.

"Regina," Emma breathed out with relief, her voice as cracked as her hands.

"Elsa is _here_and you didn't bother to call anyone _before_you went after her?!"

"I...didn't...know," Emma said as she tried to work out her tense jaw from its previous disuse.

Regina rolled her eyes.

"I think I've heard enough. Once I save you from your doom, you are _never_to speak those words to me ever again. Not as explanation and not as a half-assed apology. Do you understand me?"

"Anything...y-you ask," Emma repeated from her message.

Regina sighed, the only evidence of it in the way her breath hit the cold air. It was thinner, wispier, than Emma's had been after Elsa had shocked her with a wave of magical icicles—or whatever the blonde with the braid was equipped with in the power of her delicate hands—but the brunette's breath was still noticeable all the same.

"Can you stand?"

"N-n-no."

Regina held out a hand and Emma just stared up at her like she didn't understand the simple gesture.

"Take it," Regina sharply said as she jerked her hand toward Emma for emphasis.

Emma outstretched her arm at a glacial pace, but after a long moment she did manage to lay her hand in Regina's palm.

As soon as their hands made contact, Regina gasped and her hand flinched beneath Emma's. She looked at Emma, who had decided to put all her attention—physically and visually—on their joined hands. When she had gasped, however, it had brought Emma's eyes to hers and Regina noticeably swallowed before she looked over their hands and then the rest of the blonde as the younger woman remained on the ground.

Just as she had appeared, there was a puff of that unforgettable purple smoke and the two women were gone.

Emma felt a thousand times warmer as soon as the smoke cleared, but only on the surface. Inside, she felt like a human ice cube that would never melt. She'd seen the movie so it made sense. Her heart was frozen. Elsa had hit her straight on and now she was physically going to freeze over.

"Why did you call me," Regina asked as she draped a thick blanket over her shoulders.

Emma sat in front of a crackling fire in a room she'd never once stepped foot in, but immediately recognized that it was in Regina's house. With purple lips and a thin layer of ice now over top of her hands and wrists, she looked up at Regina as the brunette sat in front of her on the floor and rested her back against the wall right next to the fire.

"I figured you'd know...wh-what was going on," Emma answered and continued to shake.

"You could have called Rumple...or your parents."

"My parents...don't get magic stuff."

"Again, there's Rumple."

"I...di-didn't...want to- talk to him," she explained.

"It was stupid of you to call me."

"You came, didn't you?"

Regina had been looking anywhere else but Emma. Until she'd asked that rhetorical question. Her eyes shot right to Emma's and she huffed out a sigh.

"You're lucky I did, although _how_lucky I'm not sure."

"Wh-what d-d-do you mean?"

"I don't know how to fix this, Emma," Regina replied, her voice softer than it had been since Marian's return.

"But...you k-know what's happening?"

"Your heart..."

"S-so it _is_like the movie."

Regina actually looked sad as she kept quiet and occasionally roamed her eyes over Emma's body from head to toe.

"If in the movie a heart is frozen and thus freezes everything else in the body until all the person's organs shut down then yes. It's like the movie."

Emma frowned and stared down at the blanket wrapped around her.

"I really screwed up this time, huh."

Regina didn't say anything.

Emma looked up and caught Regina's eyes.

"What do we do now," she quietly asked the brunette.

Regina shook her head and spoke with a gravelly voice, "I don't know."

Emma sighed and tried not to cry again. Her tears would probably freeze and painfully stick to her face anyway.

"There has to be something. I can't- I can't leave Henry," Emma pleaded.

"What do you want me to do," Regina raised her voice. "I don't have a solution! _You_got yourself into this and I can't save you from it. I don't know how to stop the magic from killing you and even though I'm still pissed at you, I can't let you die. Henry _just_got his memories back and for him to lose _two_parents within only weeks of each other will _destroy_him."

"I know."

"Maybe I should have taken lessons from you," Regina switched gears. "You really know how to take away happiness."

"Regina, I'm _sorry_," she said on the verge of tears.

"Sorry isn't going to change what you've done. Henry's going to lose you and I'm going to have to pick up the pieces. Tell me, did you ever leave this big a mess when you left one city for another before you got here?"

Emma hugged the blanket tighter around herself.

"What were you _thinking_," Regina yelled.

"I was tr-trying to pr-protect everyone."

"It seems that will be the last thing you do." Regina's voice was low, a grumble. She seemed more displeased about Emma's predicament than about anything else that had taken place recently.

"Maybe...maybe there's another way," Emma said.

"I'm all ears, _Savior__. _What's the plan this time? Sneak up on Elsa and hope that she'll reverse her magic? Because talking to her went so well the first time."

"I didn't even get to introduce myself," Emma rushed to say with a small and still wavering voice.

Regina laughed in a way that was obvious she didn't find any of this funny.

"I hope Henry grows up to be smarter than you and your idiot parents. He's gotten himself into more trouble acting like you then he ever got himself into when I was his _only_ parent."

Emma sighed and closed her eyes.

"No. I w-wasn't going to talk to her," Emma insisted.

"Then what do you suggest?"

"Y-you have a spell book, right? M-maybe there's something in there a-bout Elsa."

"Do you really think we have time for me to research?"

"Probably not...b-but we have to try, right? For Henry?"

Regina stared at her for a moment before she nodded her agreement. Then, she stood and headed toward the hallway.

"I'll see what I can find."

Emma slowly but surely scooted closer to the fire. She kept herself bundled up in the blanket and sighed with relief when she felt the flames close enough to her face for beads of sweat to form. She knew if the cold was coming from inside her body then the fire's effects wouldn't last long, but it felt good for the moment so she reveled in it. She groaned and leaned forward, closer and closer to the fire. The groan was followed by a sigh and a moan and after a few seconds, she stretched out on the floor in front of the fireplace.

She watched the flames pop and flicker after she laid down and soon her eyes started to droop. It didn't take long before the only thing she saw was the back of her eyelids, but she could still hear the fire and the faint hum of the heater as it worked at a steady pace to warm the house. The sounds started to fade until they were muffled, as though she was listening through a pillow wrapped around her head and blocking both of her ears. The world was starting to fall away.

"Emma!"

There was a shout and a clap and then when Emma still couldn't see anything in the room, there were hands on her shoulder and she felt herself being jerked back and forth.

"Wake. Up!"

Emma drew out a groan and squeezed her eyes shut tighter.

"Emma, I will take pleasure in using a fireball on you if you don't wake up this instant!"

Emma hissed and tensed her body as she continued to be jerked back and forth then slapped twice on the arm through the blanket.

The back and forth motion stopped just as the hands disappeared from her shoulder and there wasn't another slap administered. She started to relax again, but it felt like the fire had somehow grown stronger because a heat started to rise around her.

And suddenly—

"Ah!"

Emma arched her back and sprung forward, toward the fire, when she felt like she'd sat on a heated stove top.

"What the hell?"

Emma's eyes popped open and she hissed through gritted teeth before she rolled onto her stomach. She let out a few more pained sounds that were quiet, but not quiet enough in the empty house to not be heard. She blinked a few times as she pushed herself onto her knees. The blanket fell down to her waist and she straightened out her back so she was on her knees next to the fire.

"Good. You're awake," Regina simply stated.

"Was that _necessary_," Emma asked through a grimace.

The blonde rubbed her ass through her jeans and she scrunched up her face in confusion as she felt an odd texture to the denim.

"What did you do," Emma asked as she tried to look over her shoulder and inspect the damage.

"A fireball. I said I'd use one and I did," Regina haughtily lifted her chin and crossed her arms over her chest.

"On my _ass_?!"

Regina only answered with a smirk.

"That gives lighting a fire under someone's ass a new meaning," Emma said as she continued to try and see what had become of her beloved jeans.

"Actually, I think it just makes the saying literal," Regina corrected. "There's no new meaning behind me throwing a fireball at your ass to get you to do something. That's exactly what the saying implies."

"Sans fireball. I'm pretty sure...when they first came up with that saying...they didn't actually think to light a person's ass...on fire with magic," Emma said with several pauses in between as she struggled to speak properly, though she no longer had a stutter.

Regina dismissively waved a hand in response to the blonde's comments.

"I appreciate you...trying to keep me conscious, but could you not set me on fire next time?"

"I didn't set you on fire. It was only your pants."

"Which I'm pretty sure are ruined now."

"A price worth paying if you ask me. You seem to be less weak than before I went to find my spell books."

Emma furrowed her brows then looked herself over. The ice over her hands and wrists had melted, which left them wet. Though they were still red and dry, she slowly wiggled her fingers and found that she could feel the movement again. They felt icy hot, but there was feeling, which was indeed an improvement.

"Oh," Emma said as she kept her eyes on her hands for a little longer then looked up at Regina. "Did you find anything?"

"Nothing about Elsa, but there are several spells to create heat."

"You mean like more fireballs?"

"Would you like me to light you up again," Regina grinned as she formed another fireball.

"I think you like this too much."

"What did you expect," Regina asked as she took a step closer to Emma with the fireball. "I told you I'm still pissed at you. This is probably the only time I'll be able to use magic on you and not be called evil, especially if we're the only two who know about your condition."

"That seems counterproductive."

"It's called multitasking, Emma. I throw a fireball at you and not only does it warm up the more superficial effects the cold has on you, but it also makes me feel better."

Emma rolled her eyes and stood firmly in place while Regina approached her, fireball still at the ready in her palm at her hip.

"You want to burn me like you feel I burned you, fine. But I know you know...attacking me with fireballs...isn't going to do the trick for either of us. So, what are the other ways to magically create heat?"

Regina stopped right in front of Emma and just stood there with the fireball glowing beside them. After a moment, she snuffed out the fireball and dropped her hand to her side.

"Channeling heat to a person's hands," Regina replied.

Emma saw Regina raise her hands and noticed how they glowed red and orange. Without warning, she felt a surge of heat rush from Regina to herself the instant the other woman's hands gripped her biceps.

"Holy crap," Emma breathed out, her voice barely above a whisper.

Although her arms almost burned under Regina's touch, Emma felt a shock to her chest and she squeezed her eyes shut.

"It's not wor- ..._Regina_."

Emma fell forward and clutched at her chest before she fell to her knees in front of the other woman.

"It hurts," Emma fought the urge to whimper or cry.

Regina knelt in front of Emma and her hands returned to their normal color, not a supernatural glow in sight.

"What's wrong? Why didn't it work?"

"My heart," Emma said through a clenched jaw. "It hurts. I can't- I can't breathe!"

Emma's face contorted in conjunction with her pain. Her inhales were shallow and every time her chest rose with the effort, she felt a spike of pain that pulsed out from her heart and moved throughout her upper body like a rolling wave. It wasn't something she'd felt before and it didn't compare to anything she'd felt before. All she could think to explain what it felt like was her heart constricting under the pressure of it being remolded beneath thickening ice.

The weight of it all sent Emma from her knees down onto her back by the fire, which was now long forgotten. Her wide and panicked eyes stared straight up at Regina as the brunette moved with her until she was repositioned directly above her. Brown eyes looked down at her with so much concern and it didn't make sense. Hadn't Regina already told her twice within the last few hours how pissed off she was with her? Why would she look concerned if Emma had managed to make her feel so...so, whatever it is she felt aside from the anger?

"Emma?" Her voice wasn't too soft, but it wasn't as though she was screaming at the blonde like she blamed her for being in pain or for being rendered useless on the floor.

"I-" Emma tried to speak again, but after the single syllable she grunted and squeezed her eyes shut for a second.

Pain continued to flood her system and her heart not only ached with the jolts she felt whenever she attempted to breathe, but also with an icy burn. It was what usually occurred when someone touched a large amount of ice with their bare hands for an extended period of time, like if they tried to stand after falling on the ice when skating and used their hands to get back up, slid those hands against the ice until they were back on their feet.

"What's wrong," Regina repeated her question from earlier, a little panicked herself by the sound of it.

"It's too...cold," Emma answered.

"And it's your heart?"

Emma frantically nodded, unable to look at all graceful or anything other than desperate. She didn't even realize until Regina shifted above her again that her fists were clutched around the neckline of Regina's shirt, which cut into a V that exposed just enough and not enough of her smooth, olive toned chest. The way she gripped at the shirt, however, definitely didn't allow the former queen much modesty since the blonde was tugging it south and nearly ripping it off like she was trying to expose Regina as Superman in a Clark Kent-like disguise.

Black lace. Though Emma kept most of her focus on those sincere, large brown eyes, her own green eyes had started to wander. Black lace was all she saw for what felt like a full minute or two before Regina's warm hands touched her face.

It wasn't just a natural body heat Emma felt caress both sides of her face. Regina's hands glowed again as they grazed her cheekbones and jaw. It was a small comfort, but one Emma was happy to feel if it was the last thing she ever got to experience.

"Stay with me," Regina begged before her voice took on a more familiar, mayoral edge to it. "You don't get to leave this world so easily."

If Emma could have said more than a few words at a time and without further hurting herself, she would have argued that her drawn out death was anything but easy considering the level of agony she had been forced to suffer. But she couldn't argue. She didn't have it in her. She could barely fight the torturous death that crept up on her, though it didn't exactly creep. It was more like it raged against her body like a highly disastrous storm.

"I will _not_ let you do this to me," Regina almost barked, though Emma thought she saw tears build up in the brunette's beautiful eyes.

_So beautiful. _She'd almost gotten lost in them several times before, even when they'd been fighting like pitbulls her first year in Storybrooke. Now she didn't have to pull away, didn't have to _look _away. It was all she had left, the last thing she'd remember before her eternal slumber.

Regina's hands traveled from her face to her shoulders and she kept them still and pressed to her collarbone. The heels of her palms rested against the tops of her breasts and warmth started to filter through skin and muscles and finally, into her chest cavity.

Emma took a deep breath and it didn't hurt. It sounded more like a gasp by the time the air had filled her lungs completely and her eyes were even wider in response. The warmth had yet to touch her heart, but it was close. It surrounded the slowed organ as it threatened to stop beating altogether and Emma tugged a little harder on Regina's shirt.

The tug pulled Regina down toward her and Emma felt the other woman's breath on her nose and mouth.

"Do you trust me," she heard Regina ask with so much emotion that she didn't know how to process what exactly it was Regina felt in that moment.

"...Yes," Emma breathed out in a whisper.

A tear finally escaped Regina and it slid down her cheek. The trail continued down toward the corner of the brunette's mouth, but as she rolled her lips together with a look of nervousness the tear moved down to her jaw. It dangled there until Regina tilted her head down and maneuvered herself into yet another position above Emma, her lips quivering with the force of trying to hold back more tears from falling.

The salty teardrop landed on Emma's cheek as one of Regina's hands disappeared from the blonde's chest and pressed down on the floor beside Emma's head. Her right hand remained on Emma's chest, but the pressure lightened and fingertips cautiously danced down the woman's right breast.

Before Emma knew what Regina was doing, she felt a familiar-though not as odd as the first time-feeling when suddenly a hand dipped into her chest. She clawed at Regina's free arm and emitted a noise that sounded all too close to a moan, but as she felt fingers gently wrap around her heart it wasn't desire or lust that consumed her. It was more warmth. Warmth, and light.

After she took a moment to adapt to the sensation that filled and surrounded her, Emma heard Regina gasp. The brunette almost trembled and fell on top of her as her hand carefully held on to Emma's heart.

"It's so cold," Regina said, her words breathy due to the intensity of the moment as well as the way Emma's heart felt in her grasp.

Emma tried to regulate her breathing while she still felt warm and sighed with relief at the lessening weight of her heart. She nodded in response as she remained flat on the ground and licked her lips. Once she started to calm after the terrifying moments spent in the cold and suffering, she moved a hand from Regina's neckline to grip the woman's right forearm. She felt the brunette's muscles flex beneath her touch whenever Regina's fingers readjusted around her heart and Emma realized that not only had she never been touched like this, but she had also never felt like this.

Regina's caress had only been provided because it was a necessary attempt to save her life, but it felt like so much more than a necessity. Whatever the former Evil Queen's magic was doing to her, Emma felt a surge of...something. It was unidentifiable to the blonde, but she knew it was rare and special and somehow hers. It didn't make sense, but it was everything.

Just when Emma thought the chill was gone, however, there was a wave of cold beneath her grip on Regina's arm. She looked at where she held the brunette and saw that Regina's arm had been covered with a layer of ice. She followed the trail of it up to her shoulder and flicked her eyes to Regina's face. That sight was much more painful to witness.

Regina grimaced and shook as more of her body fell victim to the same chill Emma felt almost completely cured of. The brunette's breathing was far from even and her exhales were short puffs of air more audible than her inhales, which would be easy to miss if Emma's entire focus wasn't on her.

"Regina, what are you...what are you doing," Emma asked as she felt a thousand percent better while Regina looked a thousand percent worse.

"I couldn't...let you go," Regina quietly said as more tears flowed freely from her, her voice scratchy and thick with the tears that cascaded down her cheeks.

Emma shook her head with a scared look on her face as she struggled to understand everything that was happening.

"Tell Henry...I'm sorry," Regina said with the saddest eyes Emma thought she'd ever seen and she had seen Regina look devastatingly sad quite a few times before. "And...that...I love him."

They'd been here before. Emma suddenly knew exactly what was happening. It wasn't clear to her what all Regina's magic was doing, but it was clear that it was what had brought about this tragic scene.

"Regina," Emma pleadingly said.

It was the last thing Regina had the ability to hear because before Emma could try to say anything else, she removed her hand from Emma's chest, left the blonde's heart inside at a normal temperature, and allowed the chill to claim the rest of her body.

Emma stared at Regina, who was completely frozen over. Regina had only had enough time to finally let Emma go so that her hand wasn't forever frozen around the woman's heart before she'd become a human ice sculpture herself. She hadn't straightened herself out or stood up or even bothered to lay herself down. She had put Emma first and allowed the blonde the chance to escape the hold that had saved Emma and taken her.

"No," Emma said as she slowly and slightly crawled back from Regina while she pulled herself into a sitting position. "No, no, no, no, no. Regina. _Regina!_"

Regina was still and covered with a layer of ice that allowed Emma to see the beauty that had committed a truly selfless act the younger woman didn't think she deserved after Marian. Those brown eyes were glossy through the ice and Emma suddenly felt cold all over again, but in a different way than before. The cold she felt as she stared into frozen eyes that still held such powerful emotions that couldn't be felt anymore was ten times worse than the physical ache she'd endured before Regina had come to her on Main Street. It was followed by numbness and then a sense of emptiness. Whatever warmth Regina had created in her chest that had also seemingly healed her heart was gone in an instant as she realized Regina was gone.

"No," Emma shouted as tears of her own fell down her face. "Regina, I'm sorry. _I'm__sorry_. I didn't... Please don't let this be happening. I can't- I _need_ you. I need you."

When she repeated those three words one final time, her voice had considerably softened.

"There had to be another way," Emma fought to understand as she uselessly argued to someone who wouldn't fight back or have the opportunity to fully explain themselves and their actions. "You didn't have to do what you did. ...You _can't_be gone."

She was crying then. She had turned back into the lost girl she'd been when she was a kid growing up in the foster system in an instant and she wept like the orphan she accepted herself as and admitted she was while in Neverland. She looked far from the Savior or princess or sheriff or mother she was supposed to be by all accounts and was a mess instead.

"Why should _I_get to live, huh," Emma asked before she sniffled.

Her green eyes sharped with anger she hadn't wholeheartedly felt toward the brunette, but needed to let it out some way.

"Why do _you_get to be the one to make that decision," Emma continued to ask the unresponsive woman.

Emma took another moment to look Regina over and her eyes welled up further. Silence filled the house and nothing was right. Nothing was the same and absolutely none of what had transpired made sense. The only thing that had made sense was how Emma had felt before she'd seen what Regina's magic was really doing to fix her, how it was killing Regina instead of her.

Pink lips quivered as she continued to stare at the woman, the two of them still in almost the exact same position they had been when Regina had touched her heart. Emma tried to a take a deep breath and inched closer to Regina again. She cautiously lifted a shaky hand from her lap as she faced Regina on her knees in a position that almost mirrored the Mayor's. It took a moment before her hand reached its destination and her fingers faintly touched one of Regina's cheeks. Immediately, Emma let out a shuddered gasp as she struggled to inhale without hearing the evidence of her previous crying or her current shock brought on by the feeling of Regina's iced skin beneath her.

Startlingly cold to the touch. She knew to expect it, especially since she had lived it only moments ago, but it felt different now. She had no clue why, but it's what she felt. Her tears were halted as she kept her eyes glued to Regina's through the ice. That emptiness, that numbness, had slowly started to transform into hope when she looked at the other woman. There was a feeling that felt familiar to something she had felt earlier, before things had taken a turn for the worst for Regina, that swirled in the pit of her stomach. She felt a little unbalanced due to that swirling, but there was a certain comfort in it as well.

She knew it probably looked strange and if she wasn't desperate enough to change things, she probably would have laughed at the thought of what she felt herself starting to do just then. She leaned in while her hand lingered on Regina's cheek and, though it felt like closure wrapped up in a silent goodbye, she hugged Regina with a finality that didn't solely mean goodbye. It held resolve, like it wasn't the end.

"You've given me so much," Emma quietly said as she continued to hold Regina within her careful arms that slightly burned from the cold that encased the brunette. "I want to give you just as much, if not more. Just let me give you more."

Emma tucked her chin in the crook of Regina's neck and though it hurt to hold what felt like a well-shaped block of ice, she held on. She closed her eyes and felt the sincerity of her words resonate inside herself. She knew she had meant every word with every ounce of her being, but she took the time to let it all sink in. She accepted that every part of her was Regina's. She wanted nothing more than to fix what she'd broken in their complicated relationship when she'd brought Marian back. She wanted to hold Regina like this without the ice keeping a particular distance between them. She wanted at least two family dinners a month with Regina, Henry, and herself. She even wanted one of those dinners to include her parents and the baby. She wanted so much she hadn't had the chance to have with the one person she called when she needed dire help; the one person who had put aside their hurt feelings to aid her when they found out Emma was in trouble.

There was a slow but rough inhale and a familiar heat that had been previously lacking during the embrace and Emma's eyes opened in an instant. She pulled back from the hug with a questioning look on her face and turned her head ever so slightly to take in Regina's eyes without the glossy shield that once covered them and the rest of the woman like a coat of armor. Her skin was as smooth and olive-toned as if she'd never been frozen in the first place and she blinked. Her movements were slow and subtle, but she moved. It had been reversed. The effects the chill had once had on her had disappeared.

Emma's eyes were wide with wonder and disbelief and Regina's looked much the same.

"You're...alive," Emma was the first to speak, still taken aback by the turn of events.

"How," Regina asked, equally as affected as Emma, before she considered what had happened only seconds ago. "You...hugged me?"

Emma nodded when words seemed to have had escaped her as soon as she'd made her statement that ended the sorrowful silence, which had quickly taken residence in the Mills household before Regina had thawed.

"What were you thinking about when you hugged me," Regina slowly, nervously, asked.

"You. How I wanted to fix us and what happened to you. I wanted to give you so much that I hadn't been able to. And...I just wanted..._you_."

Regina swallowed a little thickly and her tongue slid across the roof of her mouth and elicited a wet clucking sound as her lips parted in response to Emma's confession.

"But...there was only one way that could have worked," Regina said.

"How," Emma barely managed to ask above a whisper.

Regina held Emma's gaze, her eyes pools of emotions that felt too heavy and intimate. They had shared similar looks a few times before, but this one felt more significant. And when Regina answered her, it _was _more significant.

"True Love."

"Wh-" Emma breathed out like a deflating balloon, just a gust of air punched out of her lungs. "I thought that stuff had to be sealed with a kiss. That's how we've broken every curse. Kissing Henry."

"It doesn't always have to be a kiss," Regina explained. "Sometimes just an act of True Love will work. That's how I was able to—"

Emma's eyebrows jumped toward her hairline when Regina stopped herself before she admitted something she apparently didn't want to share.

"Able to what," Emma asked when a few seconds passed by without a finished explanation.

Regina just stared at Emma again, but she didn't come forward with a verbal response. Instead, those deep and focused eyes remained locked onto Emma's for a long moment more and then lowered to lips that she soon crashed against her own.

There was no burst of rainbow light, but the internal swell that always came with the flash of True Love's kiss erupted within both women. They each immediately recognized the feeling and melted into the kiss to keep it going just a little longer. It was less frantic and needy and more tender and slow and it felt like every kind of welcomed warmth on a cold day.

They separated as slowly as the kiss had become and Emma's lips retained the lingering presence of the kiss.

"I tried to warm your heart with my magic, but it wasn't having a permanent effect," Regina said. "So I siphoned out the magic that was freezing you and took it on myself."

"You traded your life for mine?"

Somehow Emma had figured that out, but to hear Regina tell her it was true made it feel more real.

"Yes," Regina answered.

"Then I hugged you with every intention to get you back...and that...was an act of True Love?"

"It's about what you wanted and how you felt so...if anything you felt stemmed from love, strong and pure love, that would be enough."

"So...you _don't_hate me?"

Regina rolled her eyes.

"I never hated you."

Emma sighed and relaxed.

"Good, because I really didn't want that to be the case. I...you know," Emma hinted at the truth in their life saving actions, but couldn't seem to voice the words behind them.

"You care about me," Regina supplied for her.

Emma smiled.

"I've cared about you since you tried to sacrifice yourself before we stopped the trigger. That day...? A lot happened and I...I saw you. I never saw you as anything other than Regina, but that day I saw more to you than I had since I got here. And that... When we used our magic, it kind of clicked that you matter. You matter like Henry matters."

Regina smiled then and said, "You matter too."

It wasn't "I love you", but it meant as much to them. Even knowing True Love had saved them, they had a few more steps to go before those three words could ever surface. There were still a few things they needed to work through and possibly a few dates they should have before they got there, but if they were willing they would no doubt be exchanging the sentiment in time. But for now, what they had was good. It was a start; a promise. They would get there.


End file.
